One Woman's Dangerous War Against the Most Hated Man on the Internet

.. as expressed via the newspapers and (some) television. It's certainly true that for a politician to do the right thing, it's necessary for them to go against "public opinion", but I'm not sure that "public opinion" and the actual opinions of members of the public are the same thing. In fact, the ban was introduced in 2007, by which point only 25% of people smoked, down from over 40% of men and 35% of women in 1980 and over 60% of men and 40% of women in 1960. It's just as easy to argue that the ban was only introduced once smokers were in a clear and shrinking minority, hardly an example of great political bravery. EDIT: a poll from 2005 shows 73% of people in support of a ban when given a yes/no choice, although this declines if compromise options such as legally enforced no-smoking areas are offered: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/43

If you believed the newspapers, you'd think that most British people want to withdraw from the EU (despite voting in favour of the common market in the only referendum we ever had on it), bring back capital punishment (despite it being long gone and there having been no popular campaign for its return) and deport a couple of million people for being insufficiently British (despite the fact that nobody has ever voted for this in large enough numbers to even start thinking about it; the Tories are only against increases in immigration and even this moderation of their past stance was only enough to get them into government via a coalition).

Without wishing to romanticise the good sense of the electorate, generally most people are more reasonable than the media makes them look. I think that's compatible with the notion that politicians follow the prevailing culture (possibly because, via doorstep campaigning and MP's surgeries they actually speak to real people every now and then) and it's the media that makes things look otherwise. It's true that going against the media does require some bravery on the part of our politicians, but I think past experience shows that when the politicians are in touch with what people actually want, it's the media that has to change course and adapt its view of "public opinion" to reality.

There is no reason a boss can fire you because of your private life.

I tend to be on the opinion that all forms of art are in the public domain by default, unless explicitely stated. So, there would be no breach of copyright here.

However, there is a clear breach on privacy rights, and I'm scared no one in the article or here seems to think that this is the reason why Moore should be prosecuted. The author says than more than half of her contacts are on the site against their own will, for something that is private to their life. That alone is not OK. Copyrights have nothing to do here.

BS. We are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of several criteria. Government agencies certainly cannot refuse service on arbitrary criteria, and minority groups throughout history have had to resort to the law due to the fact that oppressive majorities might be unfairly boycotting them.

There is no such thing as a "free society"; there are societies with different values and with different criteria as to who are fairly and unfairly victimized.

For the record, in most civilized countries at-will employment where you can be fired on the spot without compensation for no justification is considered to be a gross undermining of worker's rights.

This is factually incorrect.

There is copyright on any and all creations unless explicitly licensed otherwise. This is under the Berne convention. In the US you can register copyrighted works but only to access the higher punitive damages for infringement. It became the law in the US that all works were auto-copyrighted when the Berne convention was signed into law.

>> Copyrights have nothing to do here.

They do, it's stolen* works that are not licensed to the site, and as the escalation of penalties under copyright law has been so huge recently, it may be the best weapon to take these people down.

*(I don't usually like the use of the word "steal" or "stolen" in conjunction with copyright, but where it involves actually breaking in to people's mail accounts and taking things I don't necessarily think it's inaccurate)